Sussex County town marks third site with known PFCs contamination in Delaware

Residents attend a informational meeting on the PFCs that were found in public drinking wells at the Blades Volunteer Fire Company's banquet hall.

Jason Minto/The News Journal/USA TODAY

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story inadvertently misstated the EPA's health advisory limit for PFCs. It is 70 parts per trillion.

For nearly a week, residents and businesses in Blades have been told to steer clear of their tap water after officials discovered public drinking water supplies are contaminated with perfluorinated compounds, or PFCs.

David Ruff, left, mayor of the town of Blades, talks with Shawn Garvin, secretary of DNREC, next to ...more

David Ruff, left, mayor of the town of Blades, talks with Shawn Garvin, secretary of DNREC, next to a map of the town of Blades. Recent tests have shown that PFCs contamination were found in public drinking wells in Blades.

Jason Minto, The News Journal

Now officials say they are on a fast-track to a permanent solution. But questions remain of who is responsible for the contamination or how widespread the pollution might be.

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"A carbon filtration system is on its way,” Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control Secretary Shawn Garvin said at a public meeting in Blades Tuesday night. Carbon filtration systems have been proven to remove PFCs from water, as well as other contaminants such as nitrate.

In the meantime, he said, people in town limits and those on private wells nearby should not drink or cook with the water. A DNREC official said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will provide funding to have private wells sampled to determine possible PFCs.

People with private wells were told to provide their information so the EPA can test their water and that they should get safe drinking water that is being provided by the Delaware National Guard at the Blades fire hall. The EPA is testing in a series of half-mile radiuses around the public wells to determine how far the contamination reaches, Garvin said.

It will likely take a least a week to get the carbon system operating and flush out all pipes, fire hydrants and 150,000-gallon water tower that may have PFCs contamination.

People who live within the red outline likely have drinking water contaminated with PFCs.

People who live within the red outline likely have drinking water contaminated with PFCs.

Jason Minto, The News Journal

Within 48 hours of receiving test results late last week, state officials issued a press release warning residents of Blades not to drink or cook with their water because of PFCs contamination. PFCs, which include a large group of chemicals, have historically been used to make water- and stain-resistant products, Teflon and fire-fighting foam.

The recent tests in Blades revealed the town’s three public wells, which provide water to businesses and 1,250 residents in the 3.5-square-mile municipality, contain both perfluorooctanoic acid, also known as C8 or PFOA, and perfluorooctane sulfonate, or PFOS, chemicals that fall into the broad category of PFCs.

Long-term exposure to PFOA and PFOS can cause developmental problems in fetuses or nursing infants, cancer and can impact the liver, immune system, thyroid and cholesterol levels, according to the EPA.

Employees with Aerial Crane prepare to unload a carbon filtration system at the Blades water department.

Jason Minto/The News Journal/USA TODAY

Jamie Mack of the Division of Public Health told residents on Tuesday night that while the risk is low, there is a potential for long-term health effects.

"These are very common chemicals," he said, adding that health officials are not recommending people get any type of blood testing to find out if PFCs are impacting their health. "The best thing we can do is end the exposure."

He said officials reviewed the area's cancer rates, and while there were some concerns about the rates of lung and prostate cancer, he said there are lifestyle factors that could be to blame for that trend.

"It's very difficult to relate these chemicals to a specific individual and a specific condition," Mack said in response to one residents' question about kidney problems. "We're really talking about long-term exposures, we're talking about lifetime effects. We don't know how long yet, but we do know we stopped the exposure."

When a similar situation occurred four years ago in the city of New Castle, officials spent $1.2 million to install the necessary carbon-filtration system to rid its water supply of PFCs. Tests found nearly 5,000 residents could have been impacted by the pollution found in the city’s three public wells and the groundwater slowly flowing below the Delaware Air National Guard Base.

Around that same time, Artesian Resources Corp. learned two of its wells – which were located in the same general area, Garvin said – were impacted by PFCs. Because the company has an integrated system in that service area, the tainted wells were turned off and water was provided from other safe sources until carbon filtration systems could be installed, said Artesian Vice President Joe DiNunzio. Artesian also stepped in to help New Castle with water supplies when PFCs were found there.

“It’s just one more type of treatment in the system that has its own associated cost,” DiNunzio said. He said the systems cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the volume of water that needs to be treated. There are additional ongoing costs to replace the filters and maintain the systems as well, he said.

PFCs also were found in extremely high concentrations in water supplies near the Dover Air Force Base that same year.

Blades largely differs from those cases because water tests were prompted not by historical use of fire-fighting foam – which state officials pinpointed as the suspected culprit in the PFCs contamination in New Castle and Dover – but rather because of two plating facilities that have long been under investigation as potential sources of contamination.

State officials say they have not yet identified the source of the pollution in Blades, and it may take a while before they do. But the carbon filtration system is expected to arrive in town by Wednesday afternoon.

David Ruff, left, mayor of the town of Blades and Shawn Garvin, secretary of DNREC, at the ...more

David Ruff, left, mayor of the town of Blades and Shawn Garvin, secretary of DNREC, at the informational meeting to address the concerns from residents about the PFCs that were found in public drinking wells.

Jason Minto, The News Journal

"We have not made a link back to any facility," Garvin said in response to questions about the source of contamination. That investigation is still pending, he said.

Garvin said after the meeting that DNREC has covered the initial $150,000 for the system, and will work with the Department of Public Health to cover that bill and ongoing maintenance costs.

“The hopeful words are that there is a process in place that is looking for these kinds of things so they can be addressed properly and timely before they really are a concern,” DiNunzio said. “It’s fair and appropriate to say let’s do what we can to minimize the exposures.”

Getting a handle on PFCs

PFCs may be prevalent, but Delaware is just beginning to grapple with how widespread the chemicals may be in the First State.

Blades, a small town south of Seaford, marks the third site in four years to test positive for unsafe levels of PFCs in its drinking water supply.

In a phone interview on Monday, DNREC Secretary Shawn Garvin said his agency and others are reaching out to nearby residents who may rely on drinking water from private wells, which likely pull water from the same shallow groundwater aquifer as the public wells in Blades.

“Clearly based on this, we’ll be picking our brains to see if there are any other potential sources in Delaware that we or the EPA may not have flagged,” he said, adding that he is not aware of any other municipalities in the state that are next in line for PFCs testing.

1LT James Willey with the Delaware Army National Guard stands next to maps of the town of Blades ...more

1LT James Willey with the Delaware Army National Guard stands next to maps of the town of Blades during a informational meeting concerning the PFCs that were found in public drinking wells. The Delaware Army National Guard has been distributing bottled and bulk water to residents who have been told not to drink or cook with the tap water.

Jason Minto, The News Journal

As part of that study, the Environmental Working Group published an interactive map showing where PFCs have been detected in water supplies, including several sites in Delaware: New Castle, Newark, Dover and Wilmington. In Newark, the EPA found two samples with detectable PFOA concentrations that were below the federal health advisory level.

While officials said it’s unclear how long the contamination has been in the water in Blades, Environmental Working Group senior scientist David Andrews estimated that PFCs have likely been there for more than a decade.

“What should stand out is the fact that PFOA and PFOS have effectively been phased out for over 10 years now,” Andrews said. “It’s incredibly concerning that it takes this long for us to take action on these chemicals and then realize the extent of contamination across the environment.”

He said individuals can use reverse osmosis systems to remove the chemicals and other harmful contaminants, such as nitrates, that also could be found in their water.

Andrews said an increased focus on drinking water contamination will hopefully drive change on the local, state and federal levels when it comes to monitoring and regulating currently unregulated chemicals like PFCs.

“Drinking water standards and legal limits have not been updated significantly in decades, if not longer,” he said, calling that lack of regulatory updates a “systematic failure.”

“And even when there are legal limits – and in this case there aren’t any – just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s safe,” he said. “The widespread PFC contamination is extremely concerning. I think it’s scary for impacted communities and people in those communities, but what needs to happen is this needs to motivate people to push for local, state and federal-level change. And what’s going to drive that change, sadly, are these types of contamination events.”

The reality of health impacts

While studies have shown millions of Americans are likely drinking water contaminated with PFCs, scientists are still getting a grasp on what levels are truly dangerous to public health.

Despite Delaware health officials’ assertions that clean water is being provided to Blades residents out of an “abundance of caution” and “that the overall risk here is low,” national experts argue the safe exposure limit is far lower than the EPA’s health advisory limit of 70 parts per trillion.

“We have a substantial problem in front of us because for years we thought there wasn’t a problem and we didn’t do anything about it,” said Harvard University environmental health professor Philippe Grandjean. “We’re just looking at the tip of an iceberg as far as I can see.”

As state and local officials prepared to meet with residents in Blades and surrounding communities about the water contamination on Tuesday, researchers published a study that sheds a new light on the public health impacts of PFCs.

Beyond existing research that has established probable links between PFOA exposure and at least six adverse health effects, Harvard’s new study has found a connection between PFCs in the bloodstream and obesity. The study found that people involved in a weight-loss trial who had higher plasma concentrations of PFCs were more likely to regain more weight after the experiment.

“This is, as far as I know, the first study that shows that being overweight is not just a matter of eating the wrong food and exercising too little – it’s also a matter of industrial chemical pollution,” Grandjean said. “This is a new perspective on PFCs.”

Residents attend a informational meeting on the PFCs that were found in public drinking wells at ...more

Residents attend a informational meeting on the PFCs that were found in public drinking wells at the Blades Volunteer Fire Company's banquet hall.

As part of the settlement in that case, a panel of scientists convened to study the human health impacts of PFOA contamination and found probable links between exposure and pregnancy-induced hypertension, kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, ulcerative colitis and high cholesterol.

Grandjean said other scientific studies, including his own research first published in 2012, have linked PFCs to immune system toxicity and a lack of efficacy of vaccines administered to children.

In Blades, all three of the town’s public wells contained concentrations of PCFs averaging twice the federal health advisory level and ranging from 96.2 parts per trillion to 187.1 parts per trillion.

“Those levels are significantly above the EPA health advisory level, and even more so if you look at the New Jersey level (of 14 parts per trillion),” said Andrews of the Environmental Working Group. “We think the level should be below 1 part per trillion.”

While the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency set the health advisory limit in 2016, PCFs are not regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act, meaning public water utilities are not required to monitor or test for the chemicals.

That 70 parts per trillion limit is likely far too high because of the cumulative effects of long-term exposure to the chemicals, Grandjean said. That is partly because that limit is largely based on animal studies, not direct human health research.

“One of the problems with animal studies is that rats and mice are capable of eliminating these compounds much more rapidly than humans,” he said. “Once you get PFOS or PFOA in your blood stream, it’s going to stay there many years. With rats and mice, it’s about a day. It’s problematic, in my mind, to base an exposure limit entirely on animal data. But that’s the situation.”